Payson Roundup

Pete Aleshire/Roundup

The rescued coot is ready to re-enter Green Valley Lake.

Pete Aleshire/Roundup

Friends Nik Abram, Wayntee Hlavacek and Daniel Kitchen rescued a coot with a leg entangled with fishing line.

The day was cold. And the duck was a coot. But their hearts were warm.

So attend now, to the odd tale of the duck lovers and the crippled coot — replete with a baffling bureaucracy, duck advocates, vampire tales, a slippery coot, a bloody chase, a head-pecked vet — and a happy ending.

It all started out innocently enough, as Wayntee Hlavacek, 20, Daniel Kitchen, 24, and Nik Abram, 20, sat on a picnic table in Green Valley Park in the wintery sunlight watching the mobs of water birds foraging for bugs and bread crumbs on the green grass.

They were a cheerful bunch on a lunch break — Wyntee watching over the tumblings of her offspring, Daniel between rounds for the post office and Nik pondering the next chapter in her vampire novel.

Alas, they each suffered from an inordinate affection for all manner of critters — particularly the abandoned and wounded.

Nik once rescued a turkey with a broken leg in a feed lot. Wyntee once rescued an abandoned dog prone to seizures after falling from a second floor balcony.

So, they immediately noticed the little black water bird limping about in the on-shore flock, with fishing wire wrapped tightly around one leg.

Poor little duck, they thought — although it was actually a coot — one of the most widespread and successful of water birds. They mostly eat plants, but don’t mind gobbling up a crawdad or lizard if they can get it. They’re not picky about nest sites, and males show an admirable devotion to their mates and young — hanging about to defend them both. They lack the webbed feet and flat bill of ducks, which makes them better on land, but still effective swimmers due to flaps on the sides of their long, sharp toes. They’re often mistaken for ducks, although they go “kuk, kuk, kuk” and not “quack, quack, quack.”

Presumably, our soft-hearted heroes would not have hesitated, had they known the victim was a coot, not a duck.

In any case, they hopped right up from that picnic table, cast their lunch aside and hurried over to the parks and recreation office. However, the nice folks at the parks office said migratory waterfowl were “out of their jurisdiction.” They suggested calling the animal control people, who they said might capture the little fellow and put him out of his misery.

Horrors. Like something in a vampire novel.

So our heroes of the heart returned to the park in record time, after raiding family garages for a fishing net and a cat kennel.

They used bread crumbs to lure the coot in close, then dropped the net on him — deciding to name him Chance — as in Second Chance.

But when they tried to transfer Chance from the net to the cat carrier, he seemed distinctly unappreciative. He pecked furiously. And, to be perfectly frank, he, well, did his business with remarkable precision. Nik lost her grip and Chance went scuttling off like a drunken sailor on a listing ship.

Undaunted, the coot advocates repeated the procedure, this time unfazed by Chance’s desperation tactics.

Next they called veterinarian Lorenzo Gonzales, who agreed to remove the fishing line without charge. Getting the deeply embedded line loose involved a certain amount of bloodshed, including the repeated sharp peck to Lorenzo’s head.

“It was Chance’s way of saying thank you,” explained Nik,

Just to prove he had no hard feelings, Gonzales administered some antibiotics.

Now back to the lake, where our intrepid coot rescuers encountered a reporter on a slow news day.

The camera clicked.

The rescuers grinned. The coot pecked.

Chance did his business one more time on Nik the Vampire Novelist, before he was set down to scurry, lopsidedly back to his beloved lake.

Then Daniel headed off on to his appointed rounds, deterred by neither rain, nor snow nor crippled coots.

Wyntee rounded up the kids, like so many ducklings.

And Nik headed home to shower away the tokens of Chance’s affection.

But she didn’t mind: She counted it as just his odd way of saying thanks.